Busy bees

Here's another honey bee in the lobelia planter.

I wonder if this is the same bee that was covered with white pollen the other day. To be covered by that much pollen a bee needs to spend a lot of time feeding on and in a flower. And this bee spent several minutes in the planter where several lobelia plants are growing. Not only did it feed on the nectar of flowers growing on top of the foliage, but it also crawled around through the stems and leaves, leaving no flower untouched. Very thorough.

Here is a wool carder bee in action!

Unfortunately I only suddenly noticed that this was a wool carder bee scraping off the hairs of a lambs ear plant to use in its nest, so I didn't get a close up shot. But I'm still excited that I did actually get a shot of it at work.

See how it is scraping the plant hairs into a ball. It suddenly flew away with the ball of hairs, to stuff into its nest cavities. In this cottony mass in its nest, it forms a pollen "loaf" upon which they lay an egg. Gradually they encase their brood chamber with more soft plant hairs until it is full.